Then we proceeded to attack a military force which had come up, intent upon disturbing the obsequies.
But before we moved off, Charlotte, who had been dry-eyed from the first, came to one of us and said: “He was just twenty-one. It will take just twenty-one to pay for him.”
It was only two or three days later when Charlie Hopper rode into the camp on a magnificent chestnut-sorrel mare. We did not know him.
He said he didn’t want to enlist. He merely wanted to join the company. He explained that if he enlisted he would be a man under pay. And he didn’t want pay, he said, for the work he wanted to do. Only give him rations and a chance and he would be satisfied.
His idea of a chance soon developed itself. He wanted to be as continually as possible in the presence of the enemy, anywhere, anyhow. He wanted to shoot all the “Yankees” he could. For that purpose he had brought with him the first Whitworth rifle I ever saw, with its long range, its telescopic sights, and its terrible accuracy of fire.
He seemed about sixteen years old. He didn’t tell us anything about himself, not even where he came from. But he had a long talk, and a confidential one, with Charlie Irving. After that Charlie paid him special attention. He detailed him upon every scouting expedition that had “business” in it. Sometimes when scouting expeditions were slack, the young fellow would go off by himself and remain for a day or two in close proximity to the enemy’s lines.
Each day he wore upon his breast a little tag with a number on it.
One day when the number had reached seventeen, he and I lay together behind a sycamore log, shooting at a peculiarly pestilent picket post. After one of his shots he called out, “Eighteen.” The next shot was simultaneous, he and I firing together. The man at whom we fired fell forward over his log, evidently dead.
Charlie Hopper turned to me and said: “You fired at the same moment I did; it’s a disputed bird. I can’t count him.”